The roots of LeBron’s ascendance to become a Shooting Star

LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger collaborate on this memoir of James' early years and high school career.

These are exciting days for LeBron James.

After some minor early season struggles adjusting to playing with fading superstar Shaquille O’Neal, his Cleveland Cavaliers are riding an 11-game winning streak and sit  atop the league’s standings.

He is putting up video-game like statistics on a nightly basis, often bringing out even more jaw dropping dimensions to his game in the process.  His most recent revelations: channeling Michael Jordan’s “spectacular move” in the 1991 finals against the Los Angeles Lakers when he started going for a right hand dunk, switched gears in mid-air, and went to his left hand off the glass; and putting on a three-point shooting display against the New York Knicks that saw him draining shots from closer and closer to half court and had the Knicks admit later that they were standing around and watching him in awe.

And he’s looking at possibly the most lucrative contract in league history this summer, when he could become a free agent.

The “smart money” says James is headed to the bright lights of New York, the nation’s cultural capital and the base for close friend Jay-Z.

I’m not so sure.

The Cavaliers are built to maintain their elite status for the foreseeable future. James already has all the exposure he could possibly want.

Above all, he’s deeply tied to Ohio and his hometown of Akron.

James and Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger explain just how deep the bond runs in Shooting Stars, James’ memoir of growing up in Akron and forging unshakable times with his basketball teammates and brothers as they set out on their quest to win a national championship.

James comes from humble roots, and writes openly about moving around many times during his early years after his then-16-year-old mother Gloria gave birth to him.

He also talks about learning to play basketball and his dawning awareness of his emerging talents.

But Shooting Stars is at base a paean to the brotherhood he formed with Dru Joyce, or “Little Dru”, burly big man Sian Cotton, hard-headed Romeo Travis, and mature role player Willie Cotton during the course of their years playing first on an AAU team, and then later for Catholic School St. Vincent-St. Mary.

In a move that basketball fans will recognize as typical of how James plays the game, he shifts a lot of the attention to his teammates.

Other reviews have criticized the book for James’ venting at the media and for giving insufficient insight into James’ inner thoughts, and I will say that I found the language a bit stilted and unnatural sounding at parts.   His articulation of, and movement toward, the realization of the dream the teammates hatched also feels a tad formulaic.

That said,  James writes openly about how he is haunted by his failure to deliver in a precious few games during the course of his record-setting his school career, and how he remembers those moments far more vividly than the myriad successes he achieved.

I could relate to that.

I still remember poor decisions I made at the end of two YMCA League games on a team with my brother Mike and our dear friend Arthur Sneider in 1993.

Beyond that, James also speaks about the arrogance and dissension that gripped the team during its junior year and contributed to that being the only season in which they did not win the state championship.   To some degree, this disharmony came about due to the coaching change from the fiery Keith Dambrot,  a white coach whose use of a racial epithet had led to the implosion of his NCAA coaching career, to Dru Joyce, or Big Dru.

As Shakespeare famously wrote, though, all’s well that ends well, and the reader can rest assured that life on and off the court has a happy ending, at least through the end of high school.

Shooting Stars may not be great literature, but it is an entertaining look at one of the sporting world’s greatest stars, who is possibly heading toward his first of many NBA championships and who faces a possibly career changing decision this summer.

Saints’ Super Bowl Celebration, Michael Pollan’s food rules.

New Orleans Saints fans may not heed Michael Pollan's food rules, but others should think about it.

The Super Bowl’s over, and the Saints have won.

The underdog pulled off a dramatic come-from-behind victory, shrugging off a 10-point first quarter deficit and a failed fourth-down run by Pierre Thomas to take a fourth-quarter lead on a Drew Brees pass to Jeremy Shockey and then seal the victory with a 74-yard interception return for a touchdown by Tracy Porter.

After withstanding a final drive by four-time MVP Peyton Manning, the celebrations began.

They look to be epic.

In addition to celebrating the Saints’ first-ever championship, a triumph that sheds 43 years of frustration and heartache, New Orleans residents will roll right into Mardi Gras next Tuesday, February 16.

A quick prediction: don’t expect productivity in the Gulf region to be too high this month.

As Red Sox fans, we have had a similar experience during the magical run of October 2004, where the entire populace of New England slept little and worked less.

Cajun food is not always known for its nutritional value.  Revelers may also be tempted to buy the Doritos and Bud Light that their companies hawked relentlessly during the Super Bowl.

People looking to go in a healthier direction might be guided by the ideas articulated in Michael Pollan’s slender new book, Food Rules.

The author of two previous volumes, neither of which I have yet read, has compiled a collection of 64 rules about what and how to eat.

In a January interview, Pollan explains that the impetus for the book came from doctors who had read his earlier works and asked him to provide them with a short pamphlet to give to their patients in lieu of a lecture.

The tips are straightforward and practical.

Two of my favorites are number 19. ” If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t,” and number 39, which tells people to “eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.”

These examples give a sample of Pollan’s direct writing style as well as his underlying philosophy.  At different points in the book, he encourages the readers to eat slowly and to have a glass of wine.

There is little new or earth shattering in Pollan’s latest work; his intention seems more to be an effort to get people off of Western diets and onto healthier ways of living.

It’s unclear whether any New Orleans celebrants will heed his advice.  But I do know that I’m having a veggie burger tonight.  I just hope it’s not too processed.

UPDATE: Lanne Long comments on Michael Pollan and her eating habits:

I am a Pollan follower. I got the kindle version for my iPod Touch of his books. I watch him on TV (Oprah) and at the movies Food, Inc. I listen to his lecture on my iTunesU college-cast when I jog. I know, weird as it is, I jog to Pollan, and other food Podcasts. Last I checked, I deleted any music to make more room for food Podcasts.

Ideally, it would be nice to do all that he suggests. I am really far ahead of the curve amongst my friends and family, but I have not met the idea. There is always an event that is more about friendship, than eating ideally. Like last night while enjoying an evening with friends, I so enjoyed the Super Bowl party food last night with industrial corn chips and dip, potato chips and dip (all with unnatural “natural flavors”), industrial feed lot beef, and industrial grown flour and milk product mac and cheese. All of this, fat and salt on fat and salt was quite appealing to my taste!

Today, detox. Organic soy milk and banana for breakfast, organic salad green and fruit for lunch. Dinner, I have been looking at local organic small farm raised goat in a tomato, red pepper sauce from veggies I put up in the freezer from my local oganic CSA, and locally made Kamut pasta. Kamut is an ancient grain (farmer uses heirloom seed) grown only in one place in the USA right now.

AfroReggae a sign of hope in Rio’s favelas

This book highlights the valiant work of Afro Reggae, a non-profit in Brazil's favelas.

UPDATE: Comment from Jack Crane:

I am eager to read this book Jeff. A brief search on the origins of AfroReggae notes a liberation theology connection. Thus, another Chicago connection with likes of Father Mike Pflegar and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And I have to wonder about President Obama, who sat in on hundreds of sermons rooted in the understanding that God’s hand reaches out to the poor, as he drives by america’s ghettos in his armored limo, whether or not his heart can be stirred again to serve the disenfranchised. Hopefully the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Rio will bring in more investigative journalists to shed light on the favelas nightmare.

ORIGINAL POST: At the end of the one of the chapters in Patrick Neate and Damian Platt’s Culture Is Our Weapon, the authors insert “a simple statistic.”

From 1948 to 1999, about 13,000 people died in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they say.

By contrast, close to four times that number died due to violence in Brazil’s favelas from 1979 to 2000.

This data gives a smidgen of insight into the favelas’ intensely perilous world-an existence the authors flesh out by describing the nearly inexorable pull of o trafficante, or drug traffic, the murderous behavior of the police, and the official neglect by Brazil’s social and political elite that have characterized their treatment of the favelas since their inception close to a century ago.

More than 2 million people, the majority of whom are black, living in the favelas, a collection of illegal residences that are often tolerated by the government.

At the same time, as in America, some of the most dire living circumstances can be the environment of the most dynamic art, cultural expression and movements for social change.

In their book, Neate and Platt trace the history and current actions of AfroReggae, a combination non-profit, nurturer and promoter of artistic talent and mediator of violent disputes in the favelas.

The music style arose after the 1993 Vigario Geral massacre of more than two dozen civilians by police.  A fusion of African and reggae music, with the local flavor thrown in for good measure, AfroReggae has, like much of rap music here in America, been a way for people to depict and describe the experience of life in the favelas.

The non profit emerged from this period after an initial period as  a newspaper.  While the group alters its approach depending on the conditions and needs of the favela’s residents, the goal of promoting peace, jobs and general social uplift is consistent throughout their work.

Neate and Platt state plainly that they are not journalists and that they are admirers of the organization’s work.  The result is favorable, if not uncritical, look at the organization and what it does.  The book is a bit short on details about AfroReggae’s efficacy, and it is clear from the book that there are many people who join the group who would otherwise be involved in drug dealing and on their way to an early death.

How It Works is one of the book’s bleakest chapters.

It describes almost inevitable pull the trafficking, violence and mayhem can have on the favela’s youth.    The chapter tells the story of Jorge, a promising son of a single mother who must work multiple jobs to make ends meet.  This leaves Jorge in the care of his grandmother, who soon starts to lose the boy to the streets.  Through the course of the chapter the boy becomes drawn deeper and deeper into the drug trade, killing first a boy from a rival faction and then one he knows, all by age 15.

Another dark chapter talks about the rampant corruption among the police, many of whom make so little money they must accept bribes to survive and whose children hide their parents’ work for fear of being targeted for reprisals.

The book is not all gloom and doom, though.  AfroReggae includes chapters about survivors and about the group’s at times effective interventions into the rampant violence.

In the end, life in the favelas, and AfroReggae’s efforts to change it, continue unabated.  The group has big and small victories, some of which the authors conclude consist of having a few moments or hours of peace.

This slender volume gave me more to think about than I had expected.  I look forward to hearing if others who read it feel the same way.

Super Bowl Sunday, Dart Resources, Post-Katrina books

People hungry for Super Bowl Sunday reading should check out Neal Thompson's Hurricane Season.

As everyone in America who has not been a recluse the past 13 days knows, tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday.

The match up has the makings of a classic, even as the games have all too often ended up as overhyped blowouts that leaves companies that paid more than $2.5 million per slot frantically hoping viewers don’t start channel surfing.

Personally, I’m rooting for the Saints to topple the Colts and win their first Super Bowl in the franchise’s 43-year history.

Already profound, the meaning the team has had for the town and Gulf region has only deepened since Aug. 28, 2005, the day that New Orleans life changed permanently due to the wreckage and devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The Dart Society, on whose board I am proud to serve, has strong ties to New Orleans.

Photographer and 2009 photographer John McCusker was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team that documented life after the hurricane.

The work and the dislocation took its toll, and McCusker had an episode that some called “suicide by cop.”

Fellow Board Member Mike Walter tells the story of McCusker’s recovery and the Society’s effort to contribute to rebuilding the region in Breaking News, Breaking Down, a documentary film that has been shown worldwide and garnered multiple prizes.

Natalie Pompilio, a Dart Fellow in 2001 who eventually moved back to New Orleans for several years after the hurricane, also appears in Walter’s film.

There were a host of books written about New Orleans, many of which appeared just around the year anniversary.

Those looking for a football-oriented book to match tomorrow should think about checking out Neal Thompson’s Hurricane Season, a book that tells the story of the team at the John Curtis Christian School.  A comparatively diverse private school, John Curtis’ team is lead by J.T. Curtis, son of the school’s founder and one of the winningest high school football coaches in the country.

His entire family is involved with the team, and the commitment only intensifies in Katrina’s aftermath.  Thompson writes with insight and emotion about the team’s struggle to come together as a team after the hurricane while also dealing with unimaginable loss.

Those looking for a more panoptic look at Katrina should check out Jed Horne’s Breach of Faith.  A Times-Picayune metro editor, Horne brings outrage to this meticulously reported and deeply felt account of the massively bungled response to the catastrophe.  The strength of this book lies in Horne’s portraits of people like Ivor van Heerden, a climatologist who openly criticized the Bush Administration’s response.

The Epic Life of Satchel Paige

Larry Tye tells the story of the colorful and ageless Satchel Paige.

Growing up in Boston during the 70s and 80s, I was a die-hard Celtics fan.

The 70s saw the Cs earn their first-two titles after the glorious and unprecedented 11 rings in 13 season known simply as the Russell era.

Toward the end of the decade, though, the team was in serious decline-a period that reached its nadir during the 77-78 and 78-79 seasons.  Under the ownership of former Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown, the once proud franchise stumbled through two of its worst seasons and a selfish brand of basketball that for many was epitomized by Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe.

Tom “Satch” Sanders was the coach during part of the first of those seasons.  I did not realize, and was quite skeptical when my father told me, that the soft-spoken bespectacled man had played on half a dozen championship squads during the heyday and waning years dominated by Russell.

I also did not realize that his nickname came from a baseball player.

The Alabama-born, rubber-armed and ageless Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige had earned his place as one of America’s sporting legend decades before my birth.

Larry Tye has written Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, a biography of Paige that my dad and stepmother gave me and that tells the story of Paige’s fabulous life

I use the word fabulous deliberately because Paige seemed to obfuscate just about every significant detail about himself: his age; the number of teams he played for; the number of women he dated and married; and other more and less important information.

Certain stories from Paige changed from the first of his two memoirs to the second.

Tye spends a certain amount of time trying to uncover the truth in all of these accounts, and Satchel is more devoted to extolling Paige’s durability, his antics on and off the field, and the charismatic persona he cultivated.

By any standard, Paige had a remarkable career.

Whatever date one uses for his birth, there is little doubt that he joined the major leagues in his 40s, when he pitched effectively for the World Series-winning Cleveland Indians.

He also pitched three innings of scoreless ball at age 59, when he tutored then-rookie Jim “Catfish” Hunter in pitching ins and outs.

His persona was nearly as important as his pitching ability.  An inveterate prankster and storyteller who loved to be at the center of attention, whether he was pitching in Cuba, the United States, or anywhere else, Paige had a magnetic charm that few could resist.

Satchel is not just the tale of a genial sports icon, though.

Tye presents a generally admiring portrait of Paige that includes a warts and all element with his detailing the pitcher’s constant infidelity and erratic attention to other family members.

Tye argues that Paige is an unsung pioneer in the struggle for baseball’s racial integration-a feat that many know happened in modern times when Jackie Robinson broke the color line by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Robinson’s selection hurt Paige deeply. 

The two men had little regard for each other: Paige thought he had been unfairly bypassed and derided Robinson’s playing abilities, while Robinson considered Paige little more than an Uncle Tom figure.

Tye maintains that Paige’s captaining black teams that barnstormed against white stars and his integrating a team in the 30s in one of the Dakotas constituted putting the key in the door that Robinson ultimately opened.

Jim Trapp, our IT head and resident expert on all things baseball, does not agree, and I must say that Tye’s argument was less than fully convincing.

Tye explains that he began the work’s germination came during his research for Rising From the Rails, his book about Pullman porters.    I enjoyed the previous work more, and found myself at times laboring to get through the Paige book. 

I did end up learning more about a unique American whose influence clearly extended beyond baseball.  Still, to paraphrase the master himself, I wouldn’t criticize you if you put this book down and didn’t look back.

Rus Bradburd tells the story of Nolan Richardson.

Rus Bradburd has written an impressive biography of former Razorbacks coach Nolan Richardson.

On the surface, Father Michael Pfleger and and Nolan Richardson appear to have little in common.

Pfleger is white and grew up in an ethnic neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side, while Richardson hails from a black and Latino community in El Paso, on the U.S./Mexico border.

Pfleger is a priest who has spent his entire career in Chicago, while Richardson is a basketball coach who has coached primarily in schools in Southern states.

Pfleger never married, while Richardson has had two wives and a daughter who died tragically in her teens of cancer.

Dig deeper, though, and profound similarities emerge.

Both are fierce men of principle who have dedicated their lives to working in black communities and achieved remarkable results. Both have at times adopted an “us against the world” attitude.  And both have had long battles with their superiors and have made public statements about race that have had professional consequences.

I wrote yesterday about Radical Disciple, Bob Hercules’ hour-long documentary film about Pfleger.

This past weekend I read Forty Minutes of Hell, Rus Bradburd’s impressive biography about the coach who earned his most widespread public recognition while coaching the Arkansas Razorbacks.

A former dribbling whiz and former assistant college basketball coach whose singular recruiting coup was convincing Chicago native Tim Hardaway to play for Don Haskins at the University of Texas-El Paso, Bradburd had previously written Paddy on the Hardwood, his whimsical account of coaching professional basketball in Ireland.

In that work, you could feel Bradburd groping for his writing voice.

In Forty Minutes of Hell, he has found it.

The book traces Richardson’s life from its humble beginnings and being raised by Ol’ Mama, his grandmother who told him to knock doors to opportunity down, once given the chance, through his lofty heights at Arkansas, where his teams won the national championship over Duke in 1994, through his long-term conflicts with athletic director Frank Broyles and 2002 firing after he made derogatory remarks about Arkansas’ white fans.

The book is more than a recounting of an extroardinary man’s life.

Bradburd paints a portrait of a complex and charismatic man full of epic strengths and very related weaknesses that contribute to his undoing.   The sections in which he describes the physical decline and death of Richardson’s daughter Yvonne are hard to read.

At the same time, Bradburd also puts Richardson’s career within the context of the history of race in America generally, and the history of black coaches in particular.  He almost seamlessly weaves in the names and considerable accomplishments of other coaches at least as talented as Richardson who never got the chance to rise in the ranks because of racist practices.

This is by no means to suggest that Richardson had an easy road.

He worked his way up rung by rung, racking up championships at every level through a team of superbly well-conditioned athletes playing the uniquely aggressive brand of basketball referred to in the book’s title.

Bradburd also has a graceful denouement as he describes Richardson’s years after his firing, including a stint coaching the Mexican national team-a job that allowed him to use the Spanish skills he had forged during his childhood.  He and Broyles have a reconciliation of sorts, too.

In short, Bradburd has written a book that succeeds in the major tasks one expects of a biography: bringing a compelling central figure to life by showing him in all his complexity, and placing his individual journey within the larger human story through an explanation of the times in which he has lived.

I hope others take the time to read this worthwhile book.

Michael Pfleger, Priest and Radical Disciple.

The controversial and passionate Michael Pfleger is the protagonist of Bob Hercules' Radical Disciple.

To paraphase the Bard himself, if outrage is the food of activism, keep feeding.

Father Michael Pfleger has outrage in abundance, and has used it to fuel a relentless crusade for social justice in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood where he has ministered and led the St. Sabina faith community during the past 35 years.

He is not without detractors or contradictions.

Born into a white family on Chicago’s Southwest Side, Pfleger has overseen the growth of the one of the city’s largest and most politically active black Catholic churches.

He gained national notoriety during the 2008 presidential campaign when his mocking of Hillary Clinton and critique of white privilege during a guest sermon at Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church were played and replayed endlessly on YouTube.

Many other priests in the diocese, including those who agree with his politics if not his methods, consider him a lone wolf, unwilling to cooperate.

Director Bob Hercules has attempted to take the measure of Pfleger in Radical Disciple, an engaging and generally sympathetic look at this controversial and often compelling figure.

Pfleger knew his calling from the beginning.

Hercules shows the cherubic youth having set up an altar and praying to his flock in the basement of his homes on Chicago’s Southwest Side, much the way a young John Lewis recounts ministering to chickens in his memoir, Walking With The Wind.

A trip in his early teens to a Native American reservation in Oklahoma expanded Pfleger’s horizons and started his quest for social justice-a passion that gained strength and focus when he connected with Chicago’s black community at Precious Blood Catholic Church.

Pfleger arrived at St. Sabina in 1974. He encountered a small and beleagured membership, a dilapidated building and a veritable den of iniquity with large servings of prostitution, drug sales, abandoned homes and other associated ills.

He took the helm in 1981 and has been there since.

Radical Disciple traces Pfleger’s dawning awareness, and skillful use of, media to help him accomplish his goals of making the community a safer, more vibrant and thriving space.  The film has a number of scenes of him confronting liquor store owners, all in front of the klieg lights.

His activism has generated many detractors.  The film has a number of critics affiliated with the Catholic Church, an institution with which Pfleger has had a predictably rocky relationship. To be fair, the critics come off as a bit doctrinaire and shallow, and so ultimately have a little bit of a feel of straw men, rather than legitimate and thoughtful voices of Pfleger opponents.

The same cannot be said of longtime Chicago journalist Carol Marin. 

While clearly an admirer of the community Pfleger and others in the church have built-St. Sabina has a school, senior homes, packed services with prominent guest speakers like Cornel West, and a peaceful park-she does take him to task both for his ill-timed speech at Trinity and for what she sees as his incomplete apology.

In the end, Hercules paints Pfleger as a character who would live comfortably in a Greek tragedy-his prodigious strengths and charisma also being the source, if not of his downfall, at least of setbacks and great but geographically limited impact.

It is a portrait worth seeing. 

Radical Disciple does not fully explore all of Pfleger’s motivations and personality traits, but his outrage, and the basis for it, are well developed indeed.

Black History Month: Resources around February 1 boycott in Greensboro.

The Greensboro Four made history 50 years ago today.

Fifty years ago today, four college students made history.

Their names may not be as hallowed and celebrated as Rosa Parks, but, in many ways, the argument can be made that Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil made contributions that were at least as significant as the former seamstress did when she refused to get off a segregated Montgomery bus in December, 1955.

The four North Carolina A & T students attempted to desegregate a Woolworth’s lunch counter.

They unleashed a tidal wave.

Inspired by their actions, students across the country followed suit and eventually created the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.

In an ironic and personally pleasing twist, I just heard last night from Clayborne Carson, my undergraduate thesis adviser and author of In Struggle, a book that many consider to be the definitive work on SNCC.

Those looking for a shorter should check out the current issue of Smithsonian Magazine

Tonight, Dunreith and friend and Facing History colleague Phredd MatthewsWall attended a screening of February 1, a documentary film that tells the story of the Greensboro Four.

Chicago Freedom School, which is so ably headed by our friend Mia Henry, hosted the event.

The film, the article and Carson’s book are worth spending time, as, all too often, the contributions of young people are erased from the history books.

These works put the men in their proper place-as sparks to a seismic shift in American history.

Thanks for January, Black History Month Plans

January was a record-setting month for the blog, and I'm optimistic that Black History Month will be even better!

January is behind us, and it was a record-setting month for the blog.

The site had more than 65,000 page views, or an average of nearly 2,000 per day.

To give a little context, last January the daily average was 42 page views.

Thanks very much to everyone who is coming to the site, spreading the word and commenting.

I just wanted to give a quick preview of where we are heading in February.

As I did last year, in honor of Black History Month, I plan to write primarily about books that relate to black history.

I will also supply another quiz about the month and again offer a drink of the winner’s choice to the person who provides the most correct answers.  I hope that David Russell will be willing to put his title on the line.

As always, suggestions, comments and critiques are welcome.

Enjoy the month, and thanks again for your support!

Article about New Phoenix Assistance Center from South Shore Community News, circa November 2004

Linda Douglas expressed gratitude for numerous gifts during New Phoenix Assistance Center’s Thanksgiving dinner at the CYC-Rebecca K. Crown Center Friday night.

“I’m thankful for my sons, my health and for God for waking us every morning with a roof over our heads,” said Douglas, whose husband of more than 22 years died in a car accident in 1999.

Douglas and her twin sons were homeless for more than two years and living in a shelter before connecting with New Phoenix and finding stable housing.

“That was real hard for my boys,” said Douglas, who attended the event with her son Brandon Smith, 16, a sophomore at South Shore High School.  She added that the housing has provided positive structure for her sons.